Rules of the challenge for those not familiar with the challenge:

1. 50 books.
2. A book must be at least 50 pages long.
3. Books you started in 10 and finish in 11 count on the 11 list.
4. Re-reads count
5. If a book has two books in it it counts as two (Ex. An Orwell book with the animal farm and 1984, counts as two.)
6. No rules on what to read, besides what's listed.
7. This is for fun so enjoy yourself.

Let's start reading.

Play it again, Sam........

1.) Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

I certainly read more than 50 books last year, but I joined too late in the year to remember which ones, so I decided not to join the Challenge until this year began!
Best of luck to you all!

1.) Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder (in progress).
2.) The Lone Drow by R.A. Salvatore (in progress since I decided to begin Sophie's World yesterday).

I'll get it this year...

I only read 29 books last year. This year hopefully I can make it.

This year will be the one.

I'm starting with:

1) Wicked - Gregory Maguire

1. The Gathering Storm [Robert Jordan]

Let's do this. Good luck to you all. I hope this year we all meet our goals (be it books-to-read or some other lifestyle change/choice/adjustment). God bless you all.

1. Anansi Boys Neil Gaiman (almost done - not sure I like it nearly as much as American Gods)

And by the way, that last part up there... that was a joke!

I'm in this year.

1. The Tell-tale Brain by V.S. Ramachandran
2. Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine

I think I can manage this. I've never counted them before so it should be interesting. I presume we can use books that others read as possibilities for our own list?

Bad Science. By Ben Goldacre.
The Barefoot Investor by Scott Pape.
The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson translated by Jesse L. Byock (in progress)

Definitely doing it this year.

1. The Lost Gospels of Judas Iscariot.
In 1978 a 13 ancient books and manuscripts were found in a cave in Egypt by a bunch of peasants inside earthenware jars. Among the assorted stash of New and Old Testament pages and a Greek maths treatise, all written in Coptic, was a copy of the lost Gospel of Judas, a Gnostic and heretical text previously only known to historians in a book by Iranaeus, a bishop and heretic critic in the late 2nd century, as well as other books after which appear to have drawn sources from it.
I found this book to be one of the most interesting books I've read in a while. Although I had heard of Gnostics before in passing in other books on Christian history I knew nothing of their beliefs. They believed that their was a God above Yahweh, the ultimate, unnameable creator who was all perfect and had thought himself into existence. To them, Yahweh, and all other gods above material worlds, were imperfected off-shoots of the real god. Yahweh was actually a bit of a fuck up filled with imperfections like jealousy and wasn't it no wonder that this material world he created was also a mess.
To them only a few people, those with gnosis, or knowledge, of who they truly were, those sparks of the divine, would return back the the luminous cloud of ultimate reality. Most people, without the spark, were creations of the lesser god - Yahweh - and would simply die, as too would the creator and the rest of his creation. The Gnostics were trapped inside a mortal coil seperated by the true creator and their homeworld, Pleroma, ruled over by the mother of all creation, Barbelo, next to the nameless creator.
In Gnostic terms, Jesus was one of these sparks of the divine who came into the body of a mortal man - Jesus - to bring all the others home. Jesus could only be understood, not by his death, by hidden meanings in his words. The Christians who believed Jesus had died and was coming back to bring in a new age and a new material world had it all wrong.
In the Gospel of Judas, Judas is the one apostle who truly understood Jesus. The "betrayal" was really an act done deliberately by him under Jesus instruction so Jesus could be released from his flesh and return. To Judas he says, "...you will exceed them all [the other apostles], for you will sacrifice the man that clothes me."
But there's more to the book than this. Ehrman sets the scenario of Jesus as a man of his time. One of many apocryphal Jews going around at the time and for 150-200 years before who believed that God was going to come in and smite their enemies (the Romans), destroy most of the world and start a new slate. He gives plausible scenarios for why Judas betrayed him and sets out placing where the Gospel of his namesake fits into all of this.
The book is written very clearly in simple language with no obfuscation or navel-gazing woo.

5 stars

Right, here's me chance!

1)The Passage, Justin Cronin
2)Dark Matter, Michelle Paver

BlueIndian wrote:I presume we can use books that others read as possibilities for our own list?

I have found some great books that way...

1. The Portable Atheist - Hitchens/Assorted others

50 books in a year is out of the question for me. I have the time to do it, but I'm very slow and deliberate in the way I read. Plus I plan on reading some 400-500-page books this year, which should take a few weeks.

But it would still be fun to keep track of them, so here goes:
1. Home Land-Sam Lipsyte, Fiction (10/10, one of the funniest books I've ever read)
2. The Blind Side-Michael Lewis, Nonfiction/Sports (great so far)

1.Damsel in Distress PG Wodehouse Librivox Audiobook

Currently half way through Edith Wharton's 'House of Mirth, plus 'He's on top, Erotic stories of Male Dominance, Rachel Cramer Bussel, and Charles taylor's 'Modern Social Imaginaries'.
I want to make it this year.

Areopagitican wrote:1. The Gathering Storm [Robert Jordan]

+2. Towers of Midnight [Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson]

1.PG Wodehouse 'Damsel in Distress' Librivox Audiobook
2 Edith Wharton 'House of Mirth' Librivox Audiobook

1. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

This challenge really intrigues me, although I don't think I can make 50. Last year I read 29 (did I see someone else say that too?), but I just got a Kindle that may give me a boost. I already finished my first book of the year, so I'll go ahead and post it:

1. Nobody's Boy (Sans Famille) by Hector Malot